Acing a personality test: Can you cheat? Is it even worth it?

July 10, 2005|By Kyung M. Song, the Seattle Times

Let's say you're a moody cynic with a touch of an anti-social streak.

Should you confess it to a potential employer?

Whether you're applying to become an accountant or seeking a promotion to sales manager, chances are you may have to submit to a personality test. Increasing numbers of employers are using written mental-measurement tests to weed through applicants and to predict new hires' success.

But what if you are, ahem, deficient in certain positive attributes? Or asked point-blank whether you've ever lied, stolen or shirked your duties? Would it be foolish to be perfectly candid?

Job seekers aren't the only ones thinking about embellishing their personas. Personality-test faking -- answering in a way to make yourself look good -- is a topic of much debate among researchers and test publishers. They all agree that faking happens, but they disagree about the extent and the consequences.

Some argue that fakers can make better employees because they have to be astute enough to figure out the desired answers. But there are studies that come to the opposite conclusion: that applicants who score high on the "lie scale" make poor hires who continue their deceptive ways.

Whichever is true, test developers and employers don't want cheating. They use a variety of tactics to outwit and thwart fakers. They embed lie-detecting questions in the tests, apply standard deviations to eliminate extreme scorers and instructions include warnings against faking.

"Some people can't fake it, and some people do a great job of faking," says Lynn McFarland, who teaches psychology at Clemson University in South Carolina and is the author of several published papers on the validity of personality tests. "People say your personality isn't good or bad. But from an employer's perspective, it certainly is. They want reliable, nonemotional, agreeable people."

POWERFUL TOOLS

Personality tests are becoming popular because they have proved to be at least as powerful as job interviews or simulation exercises in predicting employee performance. Research during the past two decades has established definitive links between specific personality traits and various job performances. For instance, calm, steady types make ideal supervisors and security officers. People who are persistent and have a strong sense of self turn out to be well-suited for commissioned sales jobs.

One of the most widely accepted personality models is known as the Big Five, which sorts personality traits into five broad dimensions: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, emotional stability and openness to new experiences. But employers use dozens of types of tests that are based on different personality theories.

The tests commonly ask applicants true-or-false questions or ask them to rank statements on a scale from strongly disagree to strongly agree. Questions to gauge a person's openness to new ideas might include whether she avoids philosophical discussions (negative score) or tends to vote for liberal candidates (positive score). Emotional stability might be measured by asking if she dislikes drawing attention to herself (negative score) or is skilled at handling social situations (positive score).

AGREEABLE? WHY, SURE!

Although personality tests supposedly have no right or wrong answers, some experts contend that results are surprisingly easy to manipulate to get "right." Experiments have shown that people consistently score higher in positive attributes on personality tests when they think they're applying for a job than when they're simply instructed to answer truthfully.

McFarland says the two personality scales easiest to fake are neuroticism (whether you are anxious, moody or insecure) and conscientiousness (methodical, dependable and organized). McFarland says verifiable questions, such as "Are you often late to work?" or "Do you get into arguments with others?" tend to elicit more honest answers than general questions, such as "Are you agreeable?"

Bob Lewis, vice president of research for Personnel Decisions International in Minneapolis, distinguishes between those who simply lie on personality tests and those who try to inflate their scores to match what they think the employer wants.

"Figuring out what people want and giving them that is an adaptive behavior," says Lewis, whose company publishes several selection tests aimed at executives, managers and sales workers. "If you hire them, they tend to do pretty well on the job."

BLUFFING CAN BACKFIRE

Lewis contends that bluffing on personality tests is tricky because the "right" responses depend on the nature of the job. Conscientiousness is generally regarded as the most important personality trait across all occupations. But retail clerks and production workers may require the "rule following" type of conscientiousness, whereas managers and executives might need the "do what you say you'll do" type, Lewis said.